In the field of wearing apparel, garments have been developed in various styles, patterns and colors, typically with the intent to produce a desired visual effect. That effect has sometimes been one of form flattering or form altering attire, such as fitted shirts and corsets, or of body hiding such as camouflage. Other effects have been related to expressions of interests or points of view such as in the use of words or artistic patterns or to novelty such as in costumes.
Horizontal, vertical, and diagonal line and stripe patterns have been used, as have been geometric shapes, plaids, and checkerboard shapes. Patterns in the shapes of animate and inanimate objects as well as abstract art and symbols have been used to create specific impacts. Contrasts from the darkest darks to the lightest lights and patterns mixing black, white and colors have been employed for the purpose of creating various design results.
Some of the pattern effects tend to create optical illusions. As can be seen from a study of prior art, it has been found that garments featuring barely perceptible shading progressions (U.S. Pat. No. 1,817,053 to Zerk) and changes of color across their surfaces (U.S. Pat. No. 4,282,609 to Freedman) can provide a shapely effect due to an illusion of shadowing. Appearance modifying garments have also been developed utilizing appearance enhancing color differences to promote an improved shape of the wearer through the formation of apparent marginal edges on the garment itself (Refer to U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,458 to Johnson).
However, a concept that has yet to be developed is that of clothing created from fabric containing patterns of optical illusions themselves for specific purposes. Therefore, as an enhancement to the current state of the art, the present invention is a style of wearing apparel which employs patterns of optical illusions for the purposes of novelty, to highlight body areas and/or to create bodily appearance modification based on the natural properties of the optical illusion pattern itself.